How can you tell? They persist in using methods that are not relevant to their own children and grandchildren. Far too often, church leaders, in an effort to protect the traditions of their congregations, draw lines in the sand on nonessential issues.

This is not to say that “tradition” is wrong. It depends on how you define it, but I think most will know what I mean. Christian scholar Jaroslav Pelikan said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Churches that love tradition that way will choose their traditions over their children every time.

Too often, churches allow traditions to hinder their ability to humbly assess their missional effectiveness. Moreover, they allow traditions to trump the future trajectory of their demographic. I know of several young pastors who have been exiled from their local congregations because they didn’t fit the mold of what had always been the ethos of the leadership. Sometimes this is because impatient pastors try and force change too quickly. Other times it’s because settled churches resist change so forcefully.

Undoubtedly, there are always times to defend the traditional stances of essential doctrines in the local church. But we should not have a cultural elitism that hinders passing the torch to a new generation of leaders. If your church loves the way you do church more than your children, it loves the wrong thing.

On one hand, he raises a good point about sensitivity to cultural contexts. What good is having a good message if people don’t understand it? Thinking about Christianity globally, some church tradition must change according to that context. I also appreciate his thoughts that we should not be wedded to a way of doing things simply because that’s the way it has always been done. But this can go too far such that anything deemed not successful to the surrounding culture can be tossed out as antiquated or irrelevant tradition.

As I wrote here, tradition is important because it grounds God’s people in the Christian faith, which does have an extensive history. We should not be so quick to eliminate a liturgical element simply because it is counter-cultural, especially if it serves the purpose of grounding people in the faith and being faithful to task of the church. Yes, some might seem counter-cultural but then so is Christianity.

So how to decide which tradition needs to go? Interestingly, Stetzer brought up the Pelikan quote about tradition vs. traditionalism. I think this is an important distinction that good for starters. Tradition is timeless and should remain. Tradition accomplishes the purpose of the church as the body grows up together in the Lord (cf Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16). Tradition roots people in the Christian faith.

Traditionalism is more in the lines of sub-cultural preferences. When traditionalism is substituted for tradition, we either hold on to something for the sake of comfort OR throw out necessary elements. Neither is good.

For instance, one of the comments from Stetzer’s post said this

Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Sunday Evening Services, Hymns, wearing suits and ties to Sunday services- these are all things that help us accomplish the task that God has appointed to the church

I contend this is traditionalism masquerading as tradition. Of course Sunday School and VBS have been quite helpful in discipleship, but I highly doubt that wearing eliminating the wearing of ties will break down the church. Music is often tricky because the old hymns are generally rich in doctrine. But that doesn’t mean contemporary songs can’t be equally as substantive though they should provoke congregational singing as opposed to a performance.

But on the other hand, we can substitute crucial elements for the sake of relevancy such as eliminating the exhortation of God’s people through preaching, gathering people together as a local body, substituting partaking of the elements with pizza and soda or worse excluding them altogether, having conversations instead of instruction and eliminating governance of a local church body.

Since Stetzer put this in the context of outreach, I think here too we can get wedded to traditionalism and become static in methods, e.g. presenting the gospel in a certain way.

Honoring tradition means honoring the church. If we are too quick to get rid of it, we might lose something vital. I love this quote from Craig Allert;

Defense of these essentials (of Christianty) has been emphasized at the expense of understanding their place in theological history and therefore at the expense of understanding their importance in the contemporary church. Thus, not only have certain nonessentials been given essential status, but also some foundational aspects of theology have been underemphasized or even ignored and therefore, undervalued, and this to the detriment of the body of Christ. The rich liturgical tradition of the church becomes confined to musically induced emotionalism. The importance of the community of faith for the life of the believer is reduced to crass marketing strategies and the newest ‘get spiritual quick’ scheme. The living voice of the Bible in theological history becomes lost in individual interpretation and defense of rather static propositionalism.[1]

The bottom line is that there are no easy answers but we must be careful with the impulse to toss out tradition simply because it seems outdated.

What do you think? How do we decide if something needs to go? Would love to get your input.

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About Lisa Robinson

Servant of Christ, DTS Grad, member of Town North Presbyterian Church (PCA), non-profit professional, anti-poverty advocate, writer, thinker, explorer of ethnic food, lover of good coffee and a good laugh.

3 Responses to When Tradition Fails to Reach, What to Eliminate?

I really wish a distinction could be drawn (okay, a hard dividing line) between tradition meaning what hymns you use or whether you have an invitation (ie matters of conscience and Christian freedom) and Tradition as in mediator of Revelation (ie Tradition as Revelation overruling Christian freedom) So often, people talk about the first but in the end really are pushing the latter. or, They talk about the latter and apply it to the former. The equivocation and conflation between these two concepts (sometimes deliberate) makes the conversation hard to have.

Lisa Ruminates: The bottom line is that there are no easy answers but we must be careful with the impulse to toss out tradition simply because it seems outdated.
And Greg agrees. Just the thing about clothes alone isn’t exactly formulaic. I believe this to be an example of a principle. Do we wanna have dress codes concerning level of formality in church? I know I don’t. On the other hand, coming into the house of worship on Sunday morning dressed in whatever was layin around shows a lack of respect and reverence for the Lord in my opinion.

If I’m willing to put more thought into how I dress for work than I am how I dress for God then I might want to examine my heart priorities. On the other other hand, people are at different levels of maturity and there can be other considerations so I won’t be at the door turning people away because the have on jeans and a T-Shirt.

I am terminally allergic to ANY evangelistic packaging that attempts to soften the offense, the scandalon ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaVTcVNQxms ) of the gospel for the sake of it. It’s SUPPOSED to be offensive. All this talk about “barriers” and “defeater words” etc. is a great heaping load of psycho-babbling compromise. Success for the Christian is measured by obedience. Not results.

I’m not big on “musical outreach” either. The New Testament principle is “singing to ONE ANOTHER in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your heart TO THE LORD”. Christians are told to sing to one another and to the Lord. Is this legalistic? It’s what the word says. I am not real gung ho on helping God out with stuff He has not Himself given either by command or example in His word. Though it can also be taken WAY outta hand the old Presbyterian “regulative principle” could teach us a few things today.

Servant of Christ, DTS Grad, member of Town North Presbyterian Church (PCA), non-profit professional, anti-poverty advocate, writer, thinker, explorer of ethnic food, lover of good coffee and a good laugh.